


Well Met By Break of Day

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/M, First Meetings, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26417524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: Slade Wilson has just relocated to Starling City. He's finally unpacked, and he's even managed to find a coffee shop that isn't full of the kinds of people that offend his heightened senses. And then she walks through the door while he's picking up his order and all the fine control he's cultivated evaporates in an instant.
Relationships: Felicity Smoak/Slade Wilson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18
Collections: Het Swap Exchange 2020





	Well Met By Break of Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlsarewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/gifts).



The little coffee shop smelled of sugar and freshly roasted beans, the air thick and heavy with warmth seeping out from the kitchen ovens. Most similar locations had an underlying scent of burning—the result of coffee left too long on the warmer and oven drippings—but this shop didn’t have those mildly irritating scents in the background. It was a big part of why the place had managed to draw Slade Wilson in every morning since he’d moved to Starling City the week before. Hallowed Grounds wasn’t the closest coffee shop to his new apartment building and the devotion to its gothic theme certainly wasn’t in line with his usual aesthetics, but the devotion of its staff was a major selling point. It didn’t hurt that its particular aesthetic kept most of the usual morning crowds at bay. There weren’t many typical business types that were okay with ordering their dark roast with three sugars over a repurposed church altar by telling the cashier they wanted their cup “black as sin and just as sweet.”

“Good morning, Dread Pirate Roberts.” The barista he’d seen the last three mornings greeted him the moment he stepped up to the counter, their hand already reaching for the largest to-go cup they stocked. “Usual?”

“Yes, please,” Slade agreed amiably. 

“You know,” the barista—Sin by their name tag—began while they started the order, “if you’re going to make this a habit you should look into a reusable cup. Better for the environment.”

Slade raised a pointed eyebrow as he turned to the display of reusable cups for sale beside the register. Some of them were covered in spikes. One had devil horns. He didn’t think he needed to actually say it. He was right.

“Hey,” Sin admitted when they slid the paper cup across the counter and took his card. “I never said you had to buy it here.” They leaned across the counter when they moved to return his receipt and dropped their voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Also, we’ve got a shipment of plain black ones with the shop logo coming in on Tuesday.”

He was going to tell them to set one of those aside for him. He wasn’t planning on looking for another regular coffee shop when this one suited him well enough, and he had a feeling if he didn’t pick up a reusable cup at some point it was going to turn into the sort of thing he’d hear about several times a week. The words were on the tip of his tongue, and then the door to the shop swung open, bringing a rush of cold autumn air and a scent that dug into his bones and sharpened his focus. He’d barely turned before his eyes were glued to her, drawn by her scent and then frozen in place.

She was spring incarnate, shrouded in some sort of pale green sundress with enormous pink flowers printed on the fabric. A short denim jacket covered in patches and a pair of pale cable-knit tights warded off the chill, but Slade’s gaze didn’t linger on them for long. Her lips were plump beneath a sheen of pink gloss that matched the floral print of the dress. Soft blonde curls were pulled back into a high ponytail at the back of her skull, and the brightness of her eyes was slightly dimmed behind a pair of thick rimmed glasses. She paused to one side of the door to straighten her skirt and pat her hair back into place, her head tilted in just the right way to draw his gaze to where her pulse was visible at the junction of her neck and shoulder. Something feral deep inside Slade sat up and howled.

He clenched his jaw to leash the rush of urges that were suddenly clamoring to be free. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, and his skin rippled beneath his clothes as the beast threatened to burst forth. The creature had been a part of him for the better part of two decades. He hadn’t needed to reign it in so tightly since he was little more than a boy. She was drawing closer to the counter, and with every step she took the fight to control himself grew more and more difficult. In the end, there was only one thing he could think to do. 

Careful not to pass to close, Slade made a beeline for the door and fled.

_ ~*~*~*~*~*~ _

It happened when he was barely twenty-one, an unbelievable encounter that altered the entire course of Slade Wilson’s life. The details of the where and the why weren’t terribly important. It was one mission among many with the ASIS. The bite nearly tore his entire shoulder from his body, but by the time he got back to base it barely looked like more than a few scratches. He didn’t realize what it had done until the next month. As it turned out, he was strangely well suited to carrying a monster beneath his skin. He’d been born with a rage he’d always had to work to control, and it melded almost perfectly with the snarling wolf he became on a monthly basis.

The days leading up to the full moon were always the hardest, but he would have sworn that the stress of moving tamped the wolf down. He hadn’t been as restless since he finally finished unpacking, determined to get his life in a new city underway, and aside from the unpleasant scents that came from humanity in general he wasn’t dealing with any more animal instincts than usual. If anything, it was the easiest pre-moon week he’d had in years.

And then that girl walked into the coffee shop.

In twenty years he’d never felt anything like it. Sure, the wolf was there in his encounters with women of the years, but it usually didn’t give more than the slightest passing interest. Maybe it would make him a little more aggressive than he might have been otherwise. It had never tried so hard to seize control, like it was overcome with the need to mate at just the sight of a woman. Whoever the pretty blonde was, she had to be like the werewolf version of catnip for how badly his wilder half wanted her. 

Slade hadn’t stopped running since he left her there in the shop. Not, of course, that he was actually sprinting down sidewalks. No, he’d kept his pace to a brisk power walk from the moment he’d stepped back into the cool autumn air, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to stop moving. He walked so much that he was sure he circled the whole of Starling City by the time he trudged up the stairs—still too restless to take the elevator—of his apartment building as the afternoon started to fade into evening. He was still almost vibrating with pent-up energy, but the soles of the dress shoes he’d donned that morning were worn thin. He knew he wasn’t going to burn any of it off by continuing along the sidewalks at a brisk stroll. If he had any hope of getting to sleep before dawn he needed to  _ run _ .

Twenty minutes later found him changed into a pair of sweats, a t-shirt, and his sturdiest sneakers at the entrance to a large park. He knew the place would be crawling with runners in the early morning hours, but as the sun sank ever closer to the horizon it seemed to be as quiet as a tomb. Slade was relieved at the prospect of having the park’s extensive footpaths to himself for a couple of hours to run off his frustration. He set to stretching as he watched darkness start to drift across the sky, breathing deep to see if he could get a good scent for the trees the path he was on stretched toward. The wind changed just a moment too late for him to be prepared for what came next.

“Hey!” 

Slade’s heart felt like it was going to beat out of his ribcage. The chipper sound of her voice was as bright as the flowers that had been on her dress that had been haunting his thoughts all day. She seemed to materialize beside him before he could catch his breath to return her greeting. The dress and tights were gone, replaced by a cropped black sweater and rainbow patterned leggings that fit her like a second skin. Without the glasses she’d been wearing that morning he could see that her eyes were the most vibrant shade of green.

“I saw you at Hallowed Grounds this morning, right?” She didn’t stop long enough for him to answer. “Not that I’m stalking you or anything. It’s just that you kinda stand out, especially with the whole booking it for the door as soon as I walked in—which doesn’t mean I think you ran out because of me since that would be weird and I am babbling. Bad Felicity.” She paused just long enough to take a deep, calming breath. “Let’s try this again: Hi! I’ve got a good memory for faces, and I’m pretty sure yours was in my coffee shop this morning, right?”

Mute with shock, Slade could only nod. He was painfully aware of every minute thing about her, his senses sharpening to a narrow focus with no room for anything else. He clenched his fists, nails that hadn’t been pointed only seconds before biting into his palms. 

“I thought so!” She favored him with a cheerful smile that made him itch to touch her. “Sin said you’re new to the area. My name is Felicity Smoak.” Instead of holding out a hand for him to shake she began to do a few stretches of her own. “Now is the part of the conversation where people with manners also share their names.”

It took him two tries to clear his throat, and even then his voice came out with the hint of a growl. “Slade Wilson.”

“That wasn’t so hard!” Felicity beamed at him. She jogged a few steps away and turned back to face him, bouncing in place as she shifted from one foot to the other. “If you like jogging at night maybe we can be running buddies,” she suggested. “Catch me if you can!”

She set off down the path with another grin, and Slade had to grab onto a bench to force himself not to take off in pursuit. The curls of her ponytail bounced from side to side as she jogged down the path and disappeared around the first corner, practically the carrot at the end of a stick urging him to  _ hunt _ . Slade bent over double, one hand clenched tightly to the top of the bench while the fingers of the other gripped hard on the flesh of his thigh. He was certain that if he let himself follow her he was going to lose what little control he had left. Fighting against himself with every step, Slade turned and ran the other direction.

_ ~*~*~*~*~*~ _

A vintage yellow volvo was idling to one side of the clearing he’d found a week prior in a remote part of the national park just outside the city. Sunset was fast approaching, and the full moon wouldn’t be far behind it. There was no way he would have time to find another place to stash his car before the change was on him. So, he screwed up his courage and hoped as hard as he could that the volvo’s driver wasn’t going to be the perky blonde woman he expected to find. That hope, of course, was dashed almost immediately. 

Felicity Smoak climbed from the driver’s seat of the little yellow car and perched herself on the hood, bare feet swinging against the front fender. She hadn’t bothered with tights or a sweater in spite of the sharp chill in the air. Her sundress this time was a pastel blue covered in tiny purple violets. The toenails of her bare feet were painted to match. She was watching him over the top of her dark framed glasses with an intense focus. Slade drew his arms in tight to his body, gathering his wits to prepare for what he needed to do. He hated to pull the scary man card, but he needed to keep her as far away as possible. With a bit of steel strapped to his spine, he turned off the car and stepped out onto the grass.

She didn’t give him the chance to try on an intimidating manner.

“So,” Felicity chirped the moment he closed the car door. “Don’t take this the wrong way because I totally don’t mean it to be judgey in any kind of way, but am I right in guessing that you’ve never met another one in the harsh light of day before?”

Slade froze, his brain stuttering to a halt. “Another one?” he managed as his palms grew clammy. Her scent was on the air, stronger than it had been in any of their previous encounters, but away from the city scents there was something beneath it that he hadn’t noticed before. Something familiar.

“Another wolf,” she clarified. The glasses slipped toward the tip of her nose. “That’s why you keep trying to get away from me, isn’t it? You haven’t been close to one since you were bit, so you’ve never learned to recognize them.” 

“You… you’re like me?” He didn’t usually find himself at a loss for words, but it was a struggle to get out every one. He breathed deep, entranced by the wildness beneath her floral perfume. 

“Since college.” Felicity kicked her feet against the fender again. “I let myself get caught up in some questionable things for love of the hactivist lifestyle. It’s a great story. A pack of werewolf computer nerds draw in the naive hacker from the broken home and give her a new family. If Hallmark were in the business of exposing the world’s supernatural underbelly they would kill for my story.” She gave a sudden, full-body shudder. The last of the sun’s rays began to fade from the sky, the clearing growing darker all around them. “It’s a long story, though. I’ll save it for breakfast tomorrow morning.” 

Felicity pushed herself off the car’s hood and dropped her dress in one smooth motion. She wasn’t wearing anything else beneath it. She picked the dress up with her foot, reaching backwards to take it in hand was he raised it from the ground. She folded it carefully, popped open the door of her car, and settled it carefully in the driver’s seat. 

Slade could feel his own body straining for the change, a sharp hunger ripping through him at the sight of her. He’d thought before that the wolf looked at her as prey, but it was clear in the pounding of his heart and the tightening of his muscles that the creature was desperate to be with one of its own. Distantly, he heard one of the seams in his shirt creak and rushed to strip away his own clothes. Unable to focus enough for folding, he draped them over the hood. His eyes never left Felicity.

She tugged her glasses from her face, laid them atop the neatly folded dress, and turned to face him. While he watched the green of her eyes was overtaken with an equally vibrant yellow. Something rippled beneath her flesh, a slow roll of the beast rising to the surface. Her lips stretched into a grin, sharp canines elongating before his eyes as the bright moon rose up above the trees.

“Maybe you can try running with me this time,” she teased, walking backwards toward the trees. “You know, instead of running away.”


End file.
